So far, I've just used it to stream music and ask random questions. Seems to have a ton of "easter eggs" and the responses are usually pretty good.

Also have it paired with our Nest Thermostat and it immediately changes the temperature upon request. Have heard great reviews on the Philips Hue light system, will be buying some shortly to automate the upstairs lighting.

Is it a luxury? Sure. I'll say it is nice to do some things without needing to have my phone on me, and from what I've read it can do a LOT of things if you're willing to do some research and spend more money on home automation.

My dad has it. It seems to be a good product as long as your internet connection is strong. We tried to use it at a place with a weak wireless network and couldn't get it to work.

I set it up so he could use Pandora, IheartRadio, and Spotify. It was a little bit of a challenge to explain to him the concepts of the various music streaming services. That was a couple of weeks ago. I should check in on him and see how it is going.

For real though, Amazon Echo says "I'm sorry. I don't understand the question", way too often. Amazon should stick to logistics. It's what they do well. Google does many things well, especially search results. Paired with nest, it's a no brainer.

For real though, Amazon Echo says "I'm sorry. I don't understand the question", way too often. Amazon should stick to logistics. It's what they do well. Google does many things well, especially search results. Paired with nest, it's a no brainer.

Bought one on Prime Day for $80, I like it so far. It has a daily news brief with a decent list of sites, which is nice for a few minutes in the morning.... you can setup updates for your teams, similar to Google Now. it controls Dish, so it'll pause/resume/skip live TV and Netflix. And of course music, including Spotify.

It has timers and reminders, which I'm sure I'll use, and some other smart home stuff that I might use.

There's a beer snob skill that will tell you the beeradvocate rating of a beer.

We've had ours for about 6 months. We like it, although we really only use it to play music (which it's connected to our home theater via blue tooth), we have the hue lighting and we use it for that, I like it for the music accessibility best. But the best part is when it's time to go to bed for sex I say "Alexa, turn off bedroom and shuffle my sexy music playlist".

I've got a Dot and I like it, even thought I'll probably pick up a HomePod from Apple this winter for better sound quality and integration with Apple Music since I already subscribe to that and not Spotify.

You can stream Pandora without paying anything, which is good enough for my use case. I'm not terribly particular about specific albums or songs when I'm cooking or eating dinner. My use from the other day:

- Arrive home, Alexa reads me the news and the weather.
- I start chopping up some tomatoes and realize I'd like some music playing. Without stopping, "Alexa, play my Louis Armstrong playlist on Pandora". Music starts.
- Realize I'm running low on olive oil. "Alexa, add Olive Oil to my shopping list". That item then gets pushed to the list app that both my wife and I use.
- "Alexa, turn the lights in the kitchen all the way up" because it was a little dim.
- "Alexa, set a timer for ten minutes" for the skirt steak to marinade for a little while

I've heard it said that "luxury is a series of small delights." Even without my fancy light bulbs, the $40 Echo Dot delivers a lot of those.

The Dot leaves a good to be desired in terms of sound quality, but what do you expect from something that's so small, light, and cost $40? If you listen to old timey jazz while you're cooking, you won't even notice.

In terms of privacy, the app does store recordings of your commands on their servers. You can clear that history out, but it looses data that it uses to recognize your voice. If you think she fired off and recorded something you don't want recorded you can selectively delete that if it's that much of a concern.